February UAH global temperature anomaly – little change

The global-average lower tropospheric temperature remained high, at +0.61 deg. C for February, 2010. This is about the same as January, which in our new Version 5.3 of the UAH dataset was +0.63 deg. C. February was second warmest in the 32-year record, behind Feb 1998 which was itself the second warmest of all months. The El Nino is still the dominant temperature signal; many people living in Northern Hemisphere temperate zones were still experiencing colder than average weather.

The new dataset version does not change the long-term trend in the dataset, nor does it yield revised record months; it does, however, reduce some of the month-to-month variability, which has been slowly increasing over time.

Version 5.3 accounts for the mismatch between the average seasonal cycle produced by the older MSU and the newer AMSU instruments. This affects the value of the individual monthly departures, but does not affect the year to year variations, and thus the overall trend remains the same.

Here is a comparison of v5.2 and v5.3 for global anomalies in lower tropospheric temperature.

The following discussion is provided by John Christy:
As discussed in our running technical comments last July, we have been looking at making an adjustment to the way the average seasonal cycle is removed from the newer AMSU instruments (since 1998) versus the older MSU instruments. At that time, others (e.g. Anthony Watts) brought to our attention the fact that UAH data tended to have some systematic peculiarities with specific months, e.g. February tended to be relatively warmer while September was relatively cooler in these comparisons with other datasets. In v5.2 of our dataset we relied considerably on the older MSUs to construct the average seasonal cycle used to calculated the monthly departures for the AMSU instruments. This created the peculiarities noted above. In v5.3 we have now limited this influence.

The adjustments are very minor in terms of climate as they impact the relative departures within the year, not the year-to-year variations. Since the errors are largest in February (almost 0.13 C), we believe that February is the appropriate month to introduce v5.3 where readers will see the differences most clearly. Note that there is no change in the long term trend as both v5.2 and v5.3 show +0.132 C/decade. All that happens is a redistribution of a fraction of the anomalies among the months. Indeed, with v5.3 as with v5.2, Jan 2010 is still the warmest January and February 2010 is the second warmest Feb behind Feb 1998 in the 32-year record.

For a more detailed discussion of this issue written last July, email John Christy at christy@nsstc.uah.edu for the document.

[NOTE: These satellite measurements are not calibrated to surface thermometer data in any way, but instead use on-board redundant precision platinum resistance thermometers (PRTs) carried on the satellite radiometers. The PRT’s are individually calibrated in a laboratory before being installed in the instruments.]

If the “Northern Hemisphere temperate zones were still experiencing colder than average weather” then where are the climate zones that made Jan and Feb so warm? Oh, I see your table of data and that the tropical zone seems quite hot. Does the satellite data have finer precision than this?

Is there a map of the Earth that can be made from the satellite data used for the above temperature graph?

We didn’t even tie 1998? I thought AGW was going on unabated!? Awe man. This is quite disappointing. 12 years of CO2 and UHI significantly increasing, more and more bad surface stations, and that’s all we got? I’m scared of what this is going to look like once El Nino says bye bye.

The February number would have been larger than the January number, if not for the revision, +740 vs +.721, In fact 8 of the last 11 months would have been a higher number. Seems the line was drawn a bit politically.

What radiation, ion, and thermal influences on the on-board platinum resistance thermometers could change the calibration over time? Furthermore, any resister is going to show drift in resistance over time, varying by a certain percentage. What are the tolerances and error rates on these thermometers and are identical units being constantly operated in vacuum/radiation chambers on Earth to monitor degradation?

And while the “global average” (whatever that really means) is up a little, the arctic remains cold, and the arctic ice extent continues to grow when it looked like it had already peaked. We have been told over and over again that the loss of ice extent in the arctic was due to global warming. What does the recovery of the ice extent in the arctic mean? Let me guess, global warming!

One could postulate in 12 years we may be able to observe it is nearly as warm as 2010 :)

The interesting part of this is the large LT spikes appear to be an showing an enormous release of heat from the oceans into the atmosphere. At some point both metrics will begin to plunge. Will they drop as much as 1998-1999?

I have been wondering just how and when this will ever end. Temperatures measured to the thousandths? What will be next?

The skeptics are getting as much attention as the warmest are. And they seem to like it just as much. Without all of this attention, Willis is only a joke from a TV sitcom.

Just because we can now measure things more precisely does not mean that we must act in an extraordinary way. We have progressed without this information in the past. We used to do what was right to the persons. Now we dissect every little thing that we can find and stymie progress as we do it.

I think that Atlas Shrugged should be required reading within our educational system. Though it is elementary regarding our rise, it builds a foundation that needs to be learned and honored. We live in a world of looters and mouchers and accept it as normal.

Someone needs to just stop this co2 mania. We can not continue formulating laws under a false theory. It has to be stopped abruptly with any force possible.

Thanks Dr Christy: I apologise if this is a stupid question, but what effect if any does the high albedo from the exceptional northern hemisphere snow cover in recent months have on your measurements? “””

Only stupid questions are the ones not asked.

Seems like a higher albedo, would make the surface colder; but maybe the upper atmosphere warmer due to double pass of incoming solar; but that just a WAG; what do I know about such things.

Is rather interesting though to contemplate just what this EN is doing; was the 1998 El Nino at the same time of the year, or some other season ?

It’s good to see you defending satellite observation Roy. However; mikelorrey (16:37:52) has a valid query.

To ensure stability in an electronic circuit that may be required to operate accurately beyond its expected environment an identical circuit is often incorporated within the device. The purpose of the identical circuit is to give an identical ‘feedback’ of environmental aberrations (noise), which when added to the sensor output as an inverse signal, permits the signal to emerge without the noise from the adverse environment.

Where on earth are the very hot regions that are causing the global mean to be so high?

They must be very extensive and powerful as many sections of the northern hemisphere have been unusually cold.

I understand that New Zealand has had a cool summer. Here in Australia, the summer started off being very hot, particularly in Adelaide.
In Sydney, we had a hotish early period, but in general summer has been quite mild. It’s been so wet this year (similar to the 1950’s I recall), that it has been very, very humid. That makes it feel hot, but the thermometer says, no, quite normal to coolish for summertime.

So where oh where are the very hot places?
Are the satelite sensors able to penetrate clouds and the humid air and accurately intrepret the resulting signal.

I understand that satelite temperature measurements are very accurate. But are they measuring temperature on earth, or something rather different?

Can’t seem to find a correction applied due to the vast decrease in the atmosphere’s volume over the last few years. If this particular calibration is implied by another more direct correction or parameter, could you let other here know that?

Since persons here now speak with other people from all over this globe, it is becoming very clear that something may be amiss. Every place seems mild or downright cold, where is the hot spot or mis-calibration occurring? AMSUs infer direct temperatures, not merely anomalies, and then the anomalies are derived from the direct temperatures. Any help Roy, even if you can only give possibles?

Agree with you Mooloo. Where is it actually warmer? Numbers are all very well but try sticking your head out of the door instead of in the sand. NZ has had a very cold winter and a cooler summer. We have lit the fire
3 times in January. In fact we have had fires over 10 months of last year.
Traditionally we would start having fires in late April and discontinue them
in October(in general,we don’t have central heating in our houses downunder).
The growing season has been shorter also here in the South.

From the WINC file in Chicago: “Mild” winter with above average snow.
Lowest temp. -2F
Last year was -18F (Will the car start? cold).
Almost no ice on the “great lakes” this year, lots of ice last year.
Last 3 years have worn out 3 snow shovels, they used to last 5 years (during the “warming”).
I still remember the “next ice age scare”, it was great, I was a kid.

I think you will find that UAH and RSS have higher temps than giss etc because they are meassuring warmer oceans that of course make up 71% of the planet’s surface.
The land areas probably were cooler but with the el nino influence the temp over the oceans easily overcame the much smaller land area.

Steve Goddard,
Interesting question, I was thinking the hot spot was SST in the Pacific due to El Nino, but haven’t seen an official answer on it. Would be interesting to see if this is only SST or affecting land as well.

Dr. Spencer/Anthony/Anyone,
I understand that from 2002-current the sat (AQUOS?) uses internal calibration (very clear, and nice move with the footer BTW), was that also the case for the RSS sats (1979-2001)?

Can Dr Spencer be specific and tell us where, exactly, in the Northen Hemisphere we are experiencing these enormously high temperature anomalies?

In Europe we are experiencing 20 to 30 year low temperatures. A good portion of North America has been colder than average. The Arctic is showing strong ice growth indicating low temperatures. These ‘hotspots’, where ever they are, have not just got to be hot in relation to their own geographical location after all but to be so hot that they can overcome the very low temperatures that a lot of us have actually experienced and then go on to raise the overall average temperature anomalies to near record levels.

Now that has to be really hot in these places and also very extensive!

So where are these places, exactly, so that we can check and talk to posters here who live there, or close to there, to check their actual experiences.

I really feel this is important because whilst we have, what is becoming, a rather vague ‘Northern Hemisphere anomaly’ which seems to be the opposite of what real people in real places are actually experiencing then gaining credence for the measurement process will be difficult.

Guys! I think we would all do well to remember that we live on a ‘water world’ that affects land surface climate! Thus, there are some, perhaps in some instances ‘short’, differences between our perceptions of the way that energies flow between land surface and sea surface.

Both of those posts are to the end of a series of posts on the topic, with links to previous series.

I’ve also e-mailed requests for source code to Dr. Spencer and to NASA, neither of which were granted. I’ve also e-mailed questions I have regarding the data to Dr. Spencer, Dr. Christy, and NASA. None of my questions have been answered.

There have been a series of these satellites with those PRTs on them. The “experimental data” you request is that we’re not seeing step changes when one satellite with a new PRT replaces an old satellite with an older PRT that’s been exposed to the factors you describe.

P.S. Just to be fair, Dr. Christy did answer a question about the day/night flag in the AMSU data. But that question was a hypothetical and had nothing to do with whether or not the data used by UAH is valid.

Everybody seems curious about how it can be so cold where people are but apparently warm globally. Well the highly negative AO conditions precipitated such cold weather are manifest where people live, yes, but the effect of the AO is dual. When you get cool air in the US etc. the air in the Arctic-where few people live-is anomalously warm.

For example:

So I’d bet when we see the UAH map (John will probably release it at some point) it will show that the anomalies are more positive in those areas where people aren’t.

4 billion (19:04:27) : Posh, conspiracy theorists like you make all kinds of peep. John has been working on this fix since June.

I hope Dr. Spencer, and everyone else who is concerned with this topic, fully appreciates the lack of meaning of a statement like ” the second warmest (fill in the blank) in the last 30 years”. We’re talking about the geological history of the planet here, and a 30 year period just isn’t meaningful unless you’re talking about a single cataclysmic event like a meteor impact.

Looks like Mr Spencer is trying to hide the incline if you ask me. If something like this was done by proponents of climate change, revising temperatures UP, then the lot of you would be up in arms crying bloody murder.

Just a few months ago I saw complaints from the AGW faithful that now appear to have been corrected by this latest change. It sure looks to me like you guys are hard to satisfy. You might want to look back at the June posting of UAH results.

You’ve piqued my curiousity: what kind of fires do you have instead of central heating: gas? … Wood?.. coal? Pray do tell. I’m in Canada and live in one of many houses built without fireplaces. Wonderful to learn how different lifestyles still are in this Internet age.

Starting in late Nov a large warm area (at least equivalent to the El Nino area) developed in the Southern Pacific between South America and New Zealand. This area anomaly increased considerably during December and peaked in ~ mid January 2010 (4.06 Jan 13; 3.88 Jan 29) and has decreased in February (although still moderately strong -2.41 Feb 17; 2.98 Feb 24 and 2.37 today (http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html).

Since El Nino (located on the equator) has by all accounts, a warming effect on the NH, is it not reasonable to think that this unusual (?) occurance in the South Pacific – 30 to 60 Deg South Lat 170W – 100W long – would not have had a big effect on the SH and tropical (biggest anomaly since 1998 for tropics according to RSS) temperatures? What will be the effect on satellite temperatures if both El Nino and this South Pacific warm area moderate considerably. Will be interesting to watch over the next 6 – 8 months. I would thing it might cause a very large drop in temperature. Especially since the SH might go back to “normal” and it seems to me that the large increase in the last few months has been mostly a SH phenomena.?? Bob?

Steve Goddard (17:44:18) :

I would like to know why satellite data shows a big spike the last two months which is not seen in GISS. GISS was up by 0.17 in January and UAH was up by 0.43 RSS was up by 0.40.

Maybe because GISS coverage of SH is very poor and they did not pick up the effects of the above mentioned South Pacific “Hot Spot”?

[quote Steve Hempell (20:02:53) :]
Maybe because GISS coverage of SH is very poor and they did not pick up the effects of the above mentioned South Pacific “Hot Spot”?
[/quote]

The Aqua satellite AMSU used by UAH didn’t pick it up either. The January, 2010 raw readings are nearly identical to the January, 2009 raws readings, but the January, 2010 anomaly is listed as twice that of the January, 2009.

I’m not saying there’s no explanation for this. But I am saying an explanation is required and none has been given.

Last 3 years have worn out 3 snow shovels, they used to last 5 years (during the “warming”).

Check this out — a review from Cool Tools (the Whole Earth Catalog online follow-on) of a wheeled low-effort “sno wovel”:

Bionic snow shovel — Sno Wovel

As a Montrealer who has shoveled more snow than you can shake a very big stick at, I was intrigued when I first came across a video of this wheeled shovel in action. I live in the suburbs south of Montreal, on a street where there’s a popular bus route; the snow plow can pass my house several times a day during heavy snow falls, repeatedly depositing a compacted mound of snow in my driveway entrance.

I bought a Wovel, and what was once a dreaded exercise in futility has now become a looked forward to workout! Thanks to the Wovel’s design, all the snow’s weight gets transferred to my arms and legs. The fulcrum at the center of the big wheel effectively allows the Wovel to do the heavy lifting for me. After becoming proficient in its use, I was able to master the natural seesaw action and launch the snow surprisingly high. Now, after a season and a half of use, I can consistently build snow banks up to five feet high. It’s like having my own little nonnmotorized bulldozer.

I’ve been using mine to shovel my walk/driveway as well as my neighbor’s for more than a year, and I’ve been beating the crap out of the thing. It won’t quit. It’s made from a thick-gauge steel and is covered by a lifetime warranty. What was once about an hour of back-breaking work has been cut down to about 20 minutes, which makes this purchase one of the best expenditures I have ever made.

The extended solar minimum is barely over and already tropospheric temps are near record levels. With or without El Nino lingering, 2010 will beat 1998 as the warmest year on temperature record, (yes, it was warmer a long time ago, but humans weren’t the issue as the trigger a long time ago).

How will AGW skeptics paint the global warming going on in 2010? To what will they ascribe it? It will interesting to see how the worm will turn on the warm to come…

AusieDan,
In regards to your last question: as pointed out by DeNihilist, the sat records are developed by measurements from the lower troposphere. Dr. Spencer’s site has more detail on it (like altitudes) if you want to dig some more on it. The CRU/GISS records are from temperature stations that are near surface (2 m).

if temperature was a stock I’d say short it because judging by the temperature history graph i see volume leaving. and there’s a precipitous drop coming. don’t listen to the global warming Kramers of the world who are bullish on global warming and saying get in to believing in global warming now because you see a strong upsurge for 2 months…..and global warming looks real—DOH!!!

The reason why January/February are the warmest months will probably be because the earth’s orbit has its closest approach to the sun (perihelion) in early January.

No! The graphs are of anomalies – the differences between observed and the previous year. The seasonal effect have already been discounted. The precession of the equinoxes isn’t taken into account, but that’s a cycle 23,000 years long.

aMINO aCIDS iN mETEORITES, on what do you base your opinion? Anything other than a hunch? Like all good fundamental investors, if there is good reason that something should go higher, then you buy it. AGW theory offers pretty solid science as to why things will go higher as CO2 increases, and offers specific predictions…like smaller and smaller amounts of sea ice in the arctic, warm temperature anomalies most pronounced at the polar regions, increased water vapor in the troposphere, an acceleration of the hydrological cycle with extreme events like greater rainfall, snowfall, and more extreme droughts in areas prone to drought. These predictions by AGW models don’t prove that the theory is correct if they come to pass, but if they don’t come to pass, the theory dies. So far, nothing has caused the theory to die.

Vigilantfish
I live in Tasmania in a 3 bedroom house,medium size.I have a wood heater.I love it.If I light the fire it can heat the whole house.One downside is all doors have to be open.A problem that can be fixed by putting ducts in the ceiling.The other downside is I cannot get my heater to smoulder all night now,as the govt banned wood heaters that smoulder,they say it causes pollution,based on bad research in my opinion.http://www.auroraenergy.com.au/about_aurora/environment/woodsmoke_pollution.asp
That means I get up in freezing temps,and have to light my fire,not that big a hardship.I buy a load of dried blocks from the timber company for 50 Aus.They last me all winter,but I have to feed the fire constantly,and it can get too hot sometimes.I am so lucky to live in Tasmania,and so is Kiwiland lucky to live in NZ.It’s a completely different way of life to most citizens of the world.I love the hustle and bustle of big cities,but Tassie will do for me.The weather here has been nothing unusual,we are having a warm March so far,but on the whole the nights have been colder than usual during most of summer.
If this post is too off topic,then don’t post Anthony or moderators.
Thank you.

Why would I do anything? I’m am positing a conjecture based on all currently available data. We are already seeing near record warm tropospheric temps during the first few months of 2010 and we have see the end of a solar minimum. The cooling we saw in the 2007-2009 time period almost exactly coincides with the heart of the solar mimimum, and now the forcing of the CO2 “ought to” take over once more if AGW models are correct. If somehow 2010 turns out to not be the warmest year instrument record…oh well, then my conjecture is wrong. But most entertaining it will be if my conjecture comes to pass, to try and guess the excuses that AGW skeptics come up with as to why it will have been so warm in 2010…in fact, many will probably still insist that the nasty global climate scientist cabal will have falsified the data.

And see how the solar mimimum lines up so nicely with the cool period of 2007-2009. But now we’re moving higher once more, and short of a Mt. Pinatubo level eruption, 2010 will be the warmest year on instrument record.

R. Gates (21:22:34) :The extended solar minimum is barely over and already tropospheric temps are near record levels.
That is because as everybody knows there are delays in the solar effects. We are now seeing the effect of the solar maximum of 1958 :-)

Duh! Of course, that’s the missing bit of data that ties this whole darn climate thing together! Thank you…now off to my AGW model to plug in those sunspot numbers (and Marlyn Monroe’s measurements) during the waning days of the 1950’s…No wonder she starred in “Some Like it Hot” in 1959…she was a Warmist!

Would one you learned professional scientists care to comment as to how the introduction of satellite temperature readings takes into account variations in humidity in the arid land areas during the southern hemisphere summer,evident especially when an El Nino exists.
My impression is that about 20 years ago, the satellite data started to be used
internationally instead of raw data. As relative humidity affects ambient temperature in any given location,has the new system needed to ignore that and start from a new base line.? I’ve lived lond enough to want to challenge the data that I see on the CSIRO website about the rate of recent changes in temperature.

I’d just like to say what an interesting piece of research this is. Long after the climate debate is over this will be regarded a a good way to do open research.
Where can I download the data? As an old FORTRAN programmer, I’d like to do some analysis using C#!

Good moment for changing the calculations. January anomaly (+0.72 °C to 1979-1998) was about 0.3 degrees higher than NASA’s 0.71 °C to 1951-1980. If the NASA January anomaly is calculated for the same reference period, it is only around 0.4 °C, because 1979-1998 was about 0.3 °C warmer than 1979-1998. And UAH was also higher than all others (RSS, NCDC, CRU), if compared to the same reference period. So I’m glad that the +0.74 for february could be prevented by recalculation. So February is at least a little bit lower than january, although still not what we hoped after Roy Spencer’s estimation: “So, it could be that all factors simply conspired to give an unusually warm spike in January…only time will tell.”

The negative side: April to November 2009 are warmer in the new version, the average for 2009 didn’t change and is still +0.26 °C.

R Gates,
When the models fail predictions the modelers say it’s consistent with their predictions, readjust their models and it goes on and on and on. You know that. The models predicted more severe storms, what happened to that? They predicted a hot spot in the atmosphere over the tropics. Shrinking ice caps… steady upward trend in OHC..

What they’re doing is finding trends, extrapolating them, and making it a variable of CO2 content. If you look at the warming between 1910 and 1945 it’s just about the same as this most recent trend. How was there all that warming then without CO2?

Guessing and getting it right might as well be divination with chicken bones – if you don’t know why you got it right, it’s not science. This insane oversimplification that CO2 is “the control knob for the climate” (I’m quoting Hansen’s buddy Lacis there) and that natural variation on the 1, 10, or 100 year scale is just noise really is out there on a limb.

It could be right but it is, IMO, an extraordinary claim and I have yet to see anything but week and usually specious correlations

I think that this disconnection between weather felt by people and numbers posted by climatologists has to reach a break point. Averaging the world over temperatures and anomalies does not reflect the true heat content of the planet, which is what is important in our microweather and microclimate where we spend our life. Heat input and output of course are what determines whether the planet is heating or cooling, and global temperatures cannot be a good proxy for that.

Look at the plot given above http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
the highest anomaly positive is in the arctic and is 14C, the lowest in Russia is -4C. Is there a meaning in averaging these two anomalies in true physics? i.e. heat input and output.?

The more I think of it the more bizarre the whole business is, like a game.

“The El Nino is still the dominant temperature signal; many people living in Northern Hemisphere temperate zones were still experiencing colder than average weather.”

That brings to question the usefulness of this data set (or any other global temp series) as an indicator of Meteorological or Climatic conditions. All over the Northern Hemisphere there are signs of faster than usual circulation, the NAO, the NPO, the cold, the increased advection. But all we get from this dataset is the state of a minor current in the eastern Pacific left behind by the southward displacement of the vertical meteorologic equator and the equatorial counter-current.

The folk producing these datasets should be reflecting seriously on this matter. What is the use to me of a dataset that tells me the Earth is warm when I (and the remainder of the northern hemisphere) get cold, ice, frosts and torrential rains?

[quote Steve Hempell (20:02:53) :]
Maybe because GISS coverage of SH is very poor and they did not pick up the effects of the above mentioned South Pacific “Hot Spot”?
[/quote]

The Aqua satellite AMSU used by UAH didn’t pick it up either. The January, 2010 raw readings are nearly identical to the January, 2009 raws readings, but the January, 2010 anomaly is listed as twice that of the January, 2009.

You’ve written this twice now and I don’t understand what you mean. Are you are referring to the raw temperatures here

By my (quick) calculations the average difference in raw temperatures between Jan 2009 and Jan 2010 is ~0.39 degrees. The difference between the anomalies in the table above is 0.4 degrees (i.e. 0.613 – 0.213). This seems pretty consistent to me.

On a separate point we still seem to be getting the comment similar to last month whereby paosters are querying the data becuses of the “cold NH”. It was cold in the parts inhabited by many readers of this blog.

R Gates
I seem to be missing the evidence of smaller and smaller amounts of ice in the Arctic and have also missed your response to my pointing out that the UK Met Office has pointed out the the UK winter has been significantly drier, especially in Scotland, despite the massive amounts of snow this year.

I could have sworn that you said that an accelerated hydrological cycle was responsible for the snow.

The important measure here is not the monthly anomalies, which may be adjusted – as we have just seen – but the long term trend. It is about .13 degC/decade, and it has been relatively stable at that level for quite a while, when we filter out El Nino/La Nina effects etc.

Comparisons month to month or with earlier highs and lows have about zero significance, as natural fluctuations are many times higher than the changes implied by the trend.

As the “real” long time trend, if there is any, may be even smaller, statistical methods without the power to detect trends at around the 0.07 degC/decade level, are rather useless for the trend detection problem.

Side note: There seems to be an “urban cold island” effects among many commenters here. When the hot areas in the NH this winter tend to be places where few people live, they can’t understand there is heating going on. And that the troposphere under El Ninos may tend to warm more than the surface, is not sensational, I think.

What makes this area of science very confusing is that it is suppose to be the average around the planet.
So anamolies like hot over here and cold over here are blended.

Taking land surface temps and averaging can create quite a massive mess by the placement of where these temps are taken (like the airplane runway that the exhaust hits it).
But I mean is that our planet is exteremely complex and trying to get away with the simple will not work. The flow of weather is not straight left to right. It is like an oscillation flow which keeps changing with the input of colder or warmer currents, evaporation cycles, rotation (night and day), etc.

Anthony was quick to note this spike back in January, but gave credit to Lubos for being first to point it out. We’ve had many interesting discussions about it since then. So lay off, you Alarmists. It’s not like we are pretending it isn’t happening.

Back in January I had some questions about how much latent heat was released by the conversion of vapor to liquid, and the conversion of liquid to solid, which occurs when the sub-tropical jet sweeps moisture up from the Pacific and turns it into snow cover plopped down onto North America.

It’s pretty amazing how much heat is released creating snow cover. Of course, all this released heat will be gobbled up, because it will take an amazing amount of heat to melt the snow.

Also amazing is that it takes even more heat to dry up all the puddles.

This in some way may explain why the world often is warmer during a northern hemisphere winter. The northern hemisphere has much more land, and therefore can hold a far greater area of snow cover. (Also the earth is closest to the sun in January, but that is another matter.)

(I do fairly well, when it comes to asking questions, and inventing theories. The problem is that I spent all my math classes studying clouds out the window, and calculating the chances school would be cancelled. Therefore I depend on people like Lubos to do all the dirty work, and point out where my math is ridiculous. He’s got more understanding of math in his little finger than I have in my entire life, and if you don’t believe me, ask my banker.)

(William Connolley likely didn’t much like Lubos pointing out an error in his math, back on September 20, 2005, because apparently William under-rated the ability of the frozen north to suck up latent heat, as a so-called “heat-sink,” by a factor of 1000.) Check out: http://motls.blogspot.com/2005/09/latent-heat-ii.html. (Remember, as you read, that the year is 2005, and how Skeptics were treated back then.)

In the end the release and re-absorbing of latent heat adds up to around zero, but I think it may play a part in the creation of peaks and valleys in our temperature charts. I expect a pretty big valley, as the northern hemisphere snow cover melts, and the puddles dry up.

So what happens with the 0,12 degrees that was cut off the january anomaly? Is it added on to the months later this year? Is the version 5.3 adjustments going to be applied for earlier months (and earlier years) as well? In case it is, how far back in time ?

The discrepancy between GISS and satellites is important. If it were the other way round, people would be screaming bloody murder. Much of the Northern Hemisphere has been very cold in January and February.

We really need an explanation why satellites are showing this big spike.

Does it have to do with the elevation which TLT is measured (14,000 ft?)

January was a record high in Vancouver, is that “absolutely normal weather conditions for an El Nino year”?

Record warm January for Vancouver

Montreal, Feb 2, 2010 (AFP) – Winter Olympic host city Vancouver saw its warmest January on record, marked by a lack of snow and daffodils in bloom just days before the start of the Games, the Meteorologist Service of Canada said Tuesday.

The mean temperature reached 7.2 degrees Celsius (45 degrees Fahrenheit), up from a norm of 3.3 degrees for the month, meteorologist Matthew MacDonald, reached by telephone at the Vancouver airport, told AFP.

tata,
El Nino years in Vancouver are dry and mild. The lack of snow, in particular should not be a surprise to anyone. The temperature, well, this year probably should be in the top 10 percent anyway… so is it climate or weather?

Call it a hunch as well, but I’d bet with all the people in town for the Olympics there might have beena little uptick in UHI as well.

Just the same way that the recent NH snow, as much as we do make tongue and cheek Al Gore jokes about it, was also weather… both sides of the conversation (the level headed ones at least) should look very critically at attribution of short term weather phenomenon to climate.

Running around chasing every new high temp record, vs. us running around pointing out every new low temp record just adds to te noise. If there is solid evidence that Vancouver’s winter is, in fact, extreme/unprecedented/unusual then lets see it… but news reports that Vancouver is warm and dry during an El Nino year, AFAIK, should not come as a surprise and that was what I was trying to get at.

p.g.sharrow “PG” (16:50:18) :
I wonder just what exactly is the sensor looking at. How does it work to get a surface temperature?

It doesn’t the AQUA satellite’s sensors measure surface temperature it measures the air temperature in the lower atmosphere, the lower tropospheric temperature. It does that by comparing the radiation in the microwave regions in the microwaves emitted by a platinum resistance thermometer at a known warm temperature and the Microwaves from outer-space a known cold temperature. The surface temperature and the atmospheric temperature tend to follow each other but they are not in lock-step with each other.

It doesn’t the AQUA satellite’s sensors measure surface temperature it measures the air temperature in the lower atmosphere,
Should be:
It doesn’t measure surface temperature, the AQUA satellite’s sensors measures the air temperature in the lower atmosphere,

For an open source project, IMHO a truly non-proprietary and portable language should be used, such as C++.

Being an old FORTRAN programmer converted into C++ programmer, some years ago I wrote this. The last couple of years I have also worked with C#. Based on extensive professional experience using all 3 languages, my opinion is that C++ is by far the most suitable language for an open source climate project.

I haven’t seen an answer to my question, so I have scratched around and it looks like the answer must be “yes”. If heat is reflected from the unusually large area of snow cover – from mid-December to mid-February for much of the US, Europe and Asia, we would expect to see higher than normal troposphere temperatures in spite of lower than normal land surface temperatures, if the PRTs are extremely accurate tools for direct measurement of temperature rather than any proxy from which the effect of albedo could be eliminaated.
Drs Spencer and Christy could clarify this by giving more subdivisions of the global anomaly data, so we could see whether we are just getting carried away extrapolating from the 15% or so of the globe that has been well (measured in whole degrees, not tenths) below normal this winter.

paul jackson (07:41:07) :
(…)
Gee I wish this site had a preview button LOL.

Get Firefox (similar Mozilla-based browsers often also work).
Go here at the Climate Audit site. Follow directions for first installing the Greasemonkey add-on, then the CA Assistant script that will run on Greasemonkey.

Then you will have a Preview button, as well as some other nice features.

Caveat: On the new toolbar you will get for the comment window, there are many nice formatting options, and they will show up nice in the preview. However, not all options are enabled on the WUWT site, so the posted comment may look different from the preview. If you see the formatting used by other people, then it should be good for you to use. Besides CA and WUWT there are other sites CA Assistant runs on, and they may vary as well.

“Nick B – Vancouver’s winter is, in fact, extreme/unprecedented/unusual then lets see it… but news reports that Vancouver is warm and dry during an El Nino year, AFAIK, should not come as a surprise and that was what I was trying to get at”

Nick, let me try to help here:

Here is yesterdays data from Envirocanada. It has been back to normalish values since about midway through the Olympics. I think the problem is that people look at a map and just infer that being further north of their location, we must be colder. Forgetting that we have a huge ocean influence.

Take for example Prince Rupert, much further north then Van, yet has very little “snow days”. So much so that billions of dollars have been sunk into developing a huge deep sea terminal there for containers, oil exports, etc, because Prince Rupert is one full day by steamer (love that antiquated word!) closer to Asia then any other west coast port. The rail links are abundant also. This will save billions for the ecomony. Think OCEAN, huge heat sink.

Yes the temps here were “record” high, but don’t forget we had “record” lows just last winter…..

NickB: RSS is using the AMSU from NOAA-15 (i.e. since 1998) along with the MSU on NOAA-14 (through about 2004). At present, RSS does not use the stable AMSU on AQUA (launched in 2002).

magicjava: Our plan is to have the code written to certified federal standards for public use on a federal system – takes time and money (not ours because we don’t have funding to do this). Raw data have always been freely available and our publications describe in detail the techniques we use.

I’m 50 miles due south of Vancouver………….I love El Nino years. Didn’t like the fact that I had to mow my lawn in Februrary, but that beats shovelling snow.

Warminsts….when your models can account for ENSO, PDO, Clouds, Stratospheric water vapor, etc. start making predictions. Til then realize your undertakings are utter folly and will always be wrong. Well maybe not always….there is that saying about the broken clock…..

“R Gates
I seem to be missing the evidence of smaller and smaller amounts of ice in the Arctic and have also missed your response to my pointing out that the UK Met Office has pointed out the the UK winter has been significantly drier, especially in Scotland, despite the massive amounts of snow this year.

I could have sworn that you said that an accelerated hydrological cycle was responsible for the snow.”

I think one of the best charts of arctic sea ice, to see the longest reliable set of data, showing any meaningful trend is this one:

Related to the specifc weather in any part of the world– no single storm or season or short period can be proven to have anything to do, or not to do with AGW…only longer term effects. Yes, an intensification and acceleration of the hyrdrological cycle is part of AGW models. Wet areas will tend to see very intense downpours AND snowfalls, and deserts will see even more extreme dryness…as longer term trends, but also, there will be some shifting and expansion of certain regions, both wet and dry.

Finally, the 2007-2009 solar minimum and La Nina period combined to give a slowdown to the upward march of global tropospheric temperatures, but already we’re seeing record and near record tropospheric temps as the solar minimum has given way to increase solar activity. Sure, a good portion of this tropospheric anomaly comes from the El Nino activity, but this El Nino is not as strong as the 1998 episode, yet 2010 is likely to become the warmest year on instrument record, and the solar maximum is still several years away. AGW theorists would say this is one more bit of evidence for validation of their models.

anna v (00:48:52) :…”Heat input and output of course are what determines whether the planet is heating or cooling, and global temperatures cannot be a good proxy for that.

Look at the plot given above http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
the highest anomaly positive is in the arctic and is 14C, the lowest in Russia is -4C. Is there a meaning in averaging these two anomalies in true physics? i.e. heat input and output.?

The more I think of it the more bizarre the whole business is, like a game.”

Good stuff Anna, i too think average global temperature is a lousy proxy for deciding on climate, but even if it was a good proxy expecting to find meaningful trends in a chaotic non-linear system is futile. Climate science has still a long way to go before it can make useful prediction about future direction, let alone try to quantify impacts.

Seem to recall various “?reliable?” comments on the web in the past couple years that temperatures (or perhaps it was ‘climate’) on Mars and/or Jupiter (perhaps other planets as well) have been “cooling”. Can you comment? If so, is there a trend that applies to all (or seems to with the info we currently have)? Is there some website that keeps a graph of such data that we wouldn’t need special access to see? If so can you add it to your response? Many thanks!

@ Noelene (22:12:37) : Enjoyed your description of your home and heating methods. I would enjoy a less urban life (I grew up in a small town) but one ends up where opportunities take you – i.e. the “centre of the universe” (sarc) in the Great White North, in my case (otherwise known as Toronto). I would also love to visit your part of the world someday, but income and children don’t offer much hope of this in the foreseeable future. Thanks! Glad also to hear about the weather there – sounds like nothing unusual but I understand the Aussie papers have been trying to make it sound like you’ve had a barbeque summer. Still trying to make sense of the UAH anomoly.

I too have wondered if the snow-cover’s albedo might warm the troposphere twice, both with incoming and outgoing light. Where did you “scratch around?” I’d like to learn more.

Most of the feedback I have recieved when expressing this idea has been negative. Many have told me visable light does not warm the atmosphere at all. I suppose I am a bit stubborn to keep wondering.

People seem to know a lot about how visible light (and infra-red light) effect CO2, but less about how visible light effects H2O vapor. My guess is that H2O vapor must absorb some light, for otherwise the sky would look black, rather than blue.

Also I have to do farm-chores before sunrise, and often I take a bit of time to conduct scientific observations of dawn, (IE: loaf.) There is a short period of time before the sun even touches the highest hills when it touches the clouds, starting with the highest cirrus and moving down therough the various levels of cloud towards earth. Such sunshine is not hitting the earth, and therefore it in many ways qualifies as an experiment involving visible light passing through the atmosphere without the light rebounding back up as infrared light coming up from earth.

One remarkable phenomenon I’ve noticed is a rare but striking increase in cirrocumulous, as the sun passes through that altitude. Often it dries up and vanishes as quickly as it appears. This would seem to indicate some sort of lift is occurring up there, during the time sunbeams pass through that altitude without striking the earth. Admittedly this is only a layman’s observation, but it does explain why I am obnoxious and continue to wonder about the warming effect of visible light, even after people have told me it has no effect, (often with great authority.)

If H2O vapor is warmed at all by visible light, then it would be warmed twice when there is snow-cover’s abedo, first by decending light and then by bounced-back light. Even though the albedo would represent a net loss for the earth’s energy-budget, a short-term rise in temperatures in the troposphere might be noted.

This is another reason why I’m expecting temperatures to “plunge,” (if tenths of a degree can be called a “plunge,”) as the snow-cover melts away.

Thanks Dr Christy. I had a feeling I had read something like that somewhere, but I am struggling with the idea that what you are reporting is actually temperature, rather than a microwave frequency proxy. If it were really temperature, would there be an albedo effect, or are you saying that such an effect does not really exist?

I don’t have a table showing V5.3 in Feb. 1998, but the graph puts it about at about the same level as V5.2, so I am making the following comparison, the first column of temperature numbers being from V5.2 and the second from V5.3:

Feb. 1998 0.760 0.760
Feb. 2010 0.740 0.613

While this difference may be relatively small and hard to see on a 1978-2010 graph, it means the 1998 record high temperature will be harder to break using V5.3

Sorry Caleb missed your post. Apologies to all the grown-up physicists here, but I just looked around on G**gle and found an OU (British public university) primer on albedo, which seems pretty clear that the effect applies to solar energy in the aggregate, and specifically to heat as well as to light. I also looked for information on platinum resistance thermometers (another poster explained that that was what UAH use), which appear to be highly accurate. So I don’t understand why a process that is designed to give highly accurate temperature readings would use a microwave frequency that cancels out what appears to be a real temperature effect.
Very happy to be educated/corrected.

Another reason I’m expecting the UAH temperatures to “plunge” is because it looks like the El Nino is going to fade away. There may be a slight rally as a Kelvin Wave heads east, but if you check out the NOAA CFS model on page 28 of the following site, you see they expect this El Nino to be history by July.

Usually El Ninos make many Alarmists happy, as rising temperatures seemingly verify their theories. Meanwhile many Skeptics get all morose and sulk, for they figure Alarmists are going to tax their socks off. However a post by Bob Tisdale got me looking at all this stuff a different way.

The single word that grabbed my mind and made it think in new directions was the word “recharging,” concerning the La Nina. This of course suggests the El Nino is “discharging.”

This is quite opposite the way most think about La Ninas and El Ninos. Most assume La Ninas hold less energy, because they cool, while they think El Ninos hold more energy, because they warm. It is fascinating to me that the “cooling event” might indicate an increase in our planet’s “energy budget,” with energy going into a sort of savings account, while a “warming event” might indicate that budget is getting blown.

Also Bob Tisdale’s site has some fascinating animations of sea surface temperatures, and sea surface temperature anomalies. If you ever want to be humbled and also filled with wonder, just watch what the sea does, over the few decades we’ve been able to admire it from outer space. Besides Kelvin Waves, there are other surges of coolness and warmth which no one really understands. I think the truth of the matter is we know next to nothing, compared to what we’ll learn in the next thirty years.

“The reason why January/February are the warmest months will probably be because the earth’s orbit has its closest approach to the sun (perihelion) in early January.”

They’re not the warmest months, they’re the coldest, and it has nothing to do with the perihelion. December, January and February are colder by about 4C than June, July and August because the southern hemisphere is mostly ocean while the northern hemisphere is mostly land.

The graph is actually a plot of January/February temperatures, so although this winter is the warmest ever, it is still about 4C cooler than the average for June/July.

There is also GIStemp that show warmest year this, warming trend that, etc.

But only GIStemp is showing that. And we all know that James Hansen controls GIStemp. We know he is an environmental activist. Anyone who wants to think with an unbiased mind wouldn’t trust and environmentalist activist temperature set. But maybe some don’t want to be unbiased.

What will RGates be saying when the precipitous drop that always comes after El Nino happens?

I hope at least some of you recall the near-daily updates on satellite temps on this website when they were plummeting to a near 0 anomaly in 2008 (ish).

How quickly the tune has changed now that global temps are up. Everyone is so very curious about the reliability of satellite instrumentation. Just hilarious.

Also, with nary a peep we have scientists retroactively adjusting data, for which they have not provided the code. And yet all seems well on WUWT. Apparently what’s good for the goose isn’t good for the gander?

I hope the proverbial light has turned on for a few of you. By that, I mean the realization that this is an unrelentingly biased website, almost entirely operated and consumed by non-scientists.

Look at the satellite data as presented here in its entirety. To my eye it seems to indicate a slight warming trend. No surprise here, I think most data points to slight warming over the last 30 years. We also know that temperatures today are similar to the temperatures in the 1930s – NASA GISS methodology indicates 1934 was trivially warmer than 1998. I don’t think any of these observations are particularly controversial so………..Exactly what anthropogenic anomaly are we attempting to explain?

I wonder how many of the problems with the UAH numbers are related to trees and hills.

Consider a dark spherical object suspended in mid-air. Sunlight hits it, it warms up. About half of the IR it emits goes up (above a horizontal line), about half goes down. In addition, it warms the air that contacts it, and warmer air moves upward.

Net effect is that most of warming generated by sunlight is heading upwards. The satellites are measuring lower tropospheric air temperatures, so as they look downward they see (nearly?) all of the heating, even though below the object not even half is noticed.

We do not live in a completely flat world. There are forests, and their dark trunks and branches are soaking up sunlight even when leafless. I can go outside right now and see the difference in snow melt between forest and bare field. We have hills and mountains, and the heating they see does not much reach people where they tend to live in the valleys, which generally take longer to warm up in sunlight anyway.

And while thinking 3D, yes we also have the tall structures of mankind. I can see the snow melting off the roofs of the unheated buildings faster than the snow surrounding them. But forests have much more coverage than human structures thus the latter may be negligible to the big picture.

So we can have heating that the satellites will detect, but we, here on the cold ground, will not benefit much from that heating.

This effect could be checked for by comparing satellite data from forest regions to readings from surface stations that are very close by, near enough to the forests that they should see the same amount of sunlight yet not so close they are influenced by any forest-caused heating. Provided we can trust those surface readings, better select a highly-rated site and insist on the really raw data.

Phil M
I hope the proverbial light has turned on for a few of you. By that, I mean the realization that this is an unrelentingly biased website, almost entirely operated and consumed by non-scientists.>>

Bang on Phil. Stick around for a while. Watch how the real scientists never disagree with each other, never answer any of the non-scientists questions, never admit when they are wrong, never take a good idea from a non-scientist, heck they don’t even do smart things like putting their Phd level draft papers up for comment by the non-scientists because they’re all so dumb that the scientists know in advance that nothing will come of it. Then there’s that whole thing about not allowing name calling and smear tactics and terminology that faintly resembles accusations of crimes against humanity. I’m telling you, its shocking!

I have an older set of GISS broken down by latitude. One of the things that I noticed is that since the late 1800’s until about 25 years ago, the Arctic and Antarctic anomalies were in opposition to each other. One was always positive when the other was negative. Not enough years of data to spot a recurring trend, but it appears to me that the Antarctic oscillation has a longer wavelength than the Arctic one. Since they’ve now both crossed into positive territory (as have the temperate zones) it seems like warming in the NH is dropping off, but the net of the two is still an increase. We’re seeing nasty temp drops and southward snow extent on the land masses as they fluctuate way more than ocean, so we observe a nasty winter, but the stability of the oceans combined with the rise in the SH temperate and Antarctic zones nets to a warmer global temperature.

“What will RGates be saying when the precipitous drop that always comes after El Nino happens?”

Don’t care what happens over six months time…only the longer term. Of course temps will drop following an El Nino, but the point really is, will the peak of temps in this El Nino be stronger than the peak of temps in the 1998 El Nino. this really what starts to show a trend. We also are seeing Solar Cycle 24 starting to rev up, and this will add to temps. But in the midst of all these natural variations, the AGW hypothesis would say we should be able to detect a signal that would indicate that increased CO2 is causing long term temps to increase. If the recent El Nino is weaker than 1998, and we won’t be seeing a peak in solar cycle 24 until 2013, then to what would AGW skeptics attribute a record warm year (based on the modern temperature record). That is, if 2010 turns out to be warmer than 1998 or 1934, to what would the AGW skeptic attribute it? A weaker El Nino than 1998? AGW models give us a reasonable answer…increased CO2.

A.) I’m fairly sure this site was the third to report the spike in warming, weeks before Roy Spencer even released the monthly data for January. Roy was first, with the daily data, and Lubos was second. How then, may I ask, is this site displaying bias? (If Anthony was like Gavin, he would not report the temperature spike at all, until he had to.)

B.) As you are so amazingly scientific, and I am admittedly not, will you please explain how a gradual rise in CO2 can produce a dramatic temperature spike? (Either that, or show me a dramatic CO2 spike that matches the dramatic temperature spike.) And, as you explain, please do not mention the unscientific stuff we have discussed here today, starting with the El Nino. It is quite obvious you are so superior to us that you do not discuss the stuff we do, in which case you must have some new and interesting ideas. I personally would love to hear them. (If you don’t produce ideas, I very much fear some people will quietly assume you have none, and some might even be so rude as to suggest your skull is a hollow echo chamber full of parroted “talking points,” and we wouldn’t want that to happen, would we? So give us ideas, brother! Ideas!)

C.) Regarding the “hide the incline” talking-point: I do believe Roy Spencer announced his intent to make this adjustment beforehand, during the process, and now afterwards, and also makes his raw data available. Please ask yourself: Have Hansen, Mann, Briffa, and Phil Jones announced their intent to make adjustments beforehand, and during the process, and afterwards, or did they have to get their arms twisted by FOI requests? Do they make their raw data available? Or did they “lose” it?

D.) Just for the fun of it, go to Realclimate and post a highly critical comment about Hansen failing to provide code and raw data. Conclude it with the statement, “I hope the proverbial light has turned on for a few of you. By that, I mean the realization that this is an unrelentingly biased website, almost entirely operated and consumed by non-scientists.” Then sit back and see if Gavin ever allows your comment to see the light of day.

Then sit back and see if Gavin ever allows your comment to see the light of day.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Gavin Schmidt is not in the light of day. So he cannot bring any comment to the light of day, not even those he agrees with.

He is in the dark. His world is darkness. Light of day will do to him what it does to Dracula. Gavin Schmidt cannot do what he does in the light of day. He roams in the dark pulling others into the darkness with him.

“That is, if 2010 turns out to be warmer than 1998 or 1934, to what would the AGW skeptic attribute it? A weaker El Nino than 1998? AGW models give us a reasonable answer…increased CO2.”

You attempt to argue that since X and Y are occurring X must be due to Y. Is this a plausible hypothesis to investigate? Sure have a ball. Is this observation in a deterministically chaotic system justification to turn energy production on it’s head? Hardly, but if you think it is you get one vote at your local polling station just like me. And remember your hypothesis has not been corroborated by observation yet. Regarding the GCM – they are built based on the premise that CO2 causes warming with a net positive feedback. It is not surprising that they show warming due to CO2 – that’s the assumption they start with.

“That is, if 2010 turns out to be warmer than 1998 or 1934, to what would the AGW skeptic attribute it? A weaker El Nino than 1998? AGW models give us a reasonable answer…increased CO2.”

So what would be the answer? What hypothesis will the AGW skeptics offer if 2010 turns out to be hotter globally than 1998, despite the fact that the El Nino may be weaker, and we are no where close to a solar max?

R. Gates
That is, if 2010 turns out to be warmer than 1998 or 1934, to what would the AGW skeptic attribute it? A weaker El Nino than 1998? AGW models give us a reasonable answer…increased CO2>>

Does it work the other way around? Like if CO2 drops does the temperature go down? Because is we look back in time the temperature record keeps dropping right along with the CO2 dropping, wow, it works. Oh, wait a second, I’ve worked my way back to 1920 and the CO2 isn’t dropping anymore but the temperature is. Probably just a blip. 1910 1900 1890 1880 kinda wobbling around a bit even though CO2 isn’t, but mostly downward, wow 1830 or something seriously cold but…nope CO2 still steady. I’m stumped here. Explain this with an AGW model again? What I missed?

And click on the 14,000 foot level, and then also turn on the 20 year record high temps. You’ll see instantly where the troposphere is currently compared to the record high temps over the past 20 years. The 14,000 ft. level is handy simply because it is in the mid-range of the troposphere, and has the record high data, but if you click on any of the the other altitudes up to the tropopause (around 46,000) you’ll see a similar pattern of warmth. Also interesting to note on this site, if you go into the stratosphere, you’ll see it’s been cooling the past 20 years (as most of you well know), and of course this is another of the measurable effects predicted by AGW models.

Caleb: ” H2O vapor is warmed at all by visible light, then it would be warmed twice when there is snow-cover’s abedo, first by decending light and then by bounced-back light. Even though the albedo would represent a net loss for the earth’s energy-budget, a short-term rise in temperatures in the troposphere might be noted.”

“This is another reason why I’m expecting temperatures to “plunge,” (if tenths of a degree can be called a “plunge,”) as the snow-cover melts away.”

DeNihilist (09:13:42) :
“Nick B – Vancouver’s winter is, in fact, extreme/unprecedented/unusual then lets see it… but news reports that Vancouver is warm and dry during an El Nino year, AFAIK, should not come as a surprise and that was what I was trying to get at”

Nick, let me try to help here:

Here is yesterdays data from Envirocanada. It has been back to normalish values since about midway through the Olympics. I think the problem is that people look at a map and just infer that being further north of their location, we must be colder. Forgetting that we have a huge ocean influence.

Try going inland to Kamloops and Vernon where it was beautifully warm today and where they haven’t had any significant snow since Christmas (despite being mysteriously ‘snow-covered’ according to Rutgers). Or on the pass between the two where Monte Lake has gone from being driveable on two weeks ago to being fishable by boat yesterday (rather earlier than usual). The locals are worried about the lack of snow pack this year leading to drought this summer.

Phil: “Try going inland to Kamloops and Vernon where it was beautifully warm today and where they haven’t had any significant snow since Christmas (despite being mysteriously ’snow-covered’ according to Rutgers). Or on the pass between the two where Monte Lake has gone from being driveable on two weeks ago to being fishable by boat yesterday (rather earlier than usual). The locals are worried about the lack of snow pack this year leading to drought this summer.”

A positive PNA throughout the winter, with a negative NAO for the past FIVE months and something similar for the AO for the same.

R. “what would be the answer? What hypothesis will the AGW skeptics offer if 2010 turns out to be hotter globally than 1998, despite the fact that the El Nino may be weaker, and we are no where close to a solar max”

NickB:
I didn’t add the Vancouver article as anecdotal proof for global warming, it was anecdotal proof for all of NH not being cooler than normal since that (if I remember it correctly) what the original question was talking about..

R. Gates
“That is, if 2010 turns out to be warmer than 1998 or 1934, to what would the AGW skeptic attribute it?”

Are you asking for a theory? Wonderful! I love inventing theories! (It’s the math involved in gathering data to back a theory up that I’m not so good at.)

OK. For the fun of it, let’s tweak a variable in the system. Let’s reduce the amount of energy coming from the sun a hair. Where would you expect to see a change?

Because the oceans retain much heat and land masses lose heat swiftly, the first change you’d expect to see is: Cooling over land. Because most of the land is in the northern hemisphere, you’d expect to see most cooling over northern land masses.

That reaction would in turn cause a reaction in the jet stream, which might loop further north over the relatively warmer oceans and loop further south over the relatively colder land. Such large loops are in turn conducive to a blocking pattern, such as a negative AO. That in turn would have the reaction of creating an area of warmth over a place like Greenland.

Another effect of blocking patterns is the weakening of trade winds. Weaker trade winds tend to discourage the recharging of the Pacific Warm Pool, called a La Nina, and instead to encourage the discharge of that warmth, which we call an El Nino.

So far we have seen the initial action, less-energy-from-the-sun, create a reaction of warming over Greenland and much of the Pacific. It seems counterintuitive, but cooling causes warming, for a bit.

However both a blocking pattern over Greenland and an El Nino are, in and of themselves, actions, which generate reactions. (Water doesn’t slosh to the front of the bathtub without generating a slosh that comes back the other way.)

Exactly how might these re-reactions play out ? I’m not sure of the details, but it will be fun to watch. I expect the El Nino to give way to a La Nina, and the spike in temperatures to be followed by a “plunge” of a half degree by this time next year. Care to bet me a nickel on that?

In any case, please note I described all these actions and reactions, springing from a single variable, without involving CO2.

Another variable would be a big volcanic eruption. If that occurs, all bets are off, because (after initial cooling) a whole different sequence of actions and reactions gets going.

By the way, I found your comment of (19:42:13) : to be well-worded, lucid, and to hold healthy challenges. I don’t at all object to getting my mind stimulated by that sort of questioning.

Phil M,
I must have missed all the posts and comments on RC yelling at those guys every time GISS upward revised current/recent or downward revised historical temps. Maybe you can show me where there was outrage expressed there to adjustments that worked in the favor of their storyline? I’ve never seen it.

Now, what I should be able to find for you is a post from one of the alarmsist blogs pointing seasonal adjustments in this temp series and saying, more or less, that it should be ignored until this issue was resolved. Perhaps you missed them, but there were a good number of comments here (both pro-AGW and skeptical of AGW) questioning it. Was/is there a tendency on the part of many AGW skeptics here to look the other way, sure, it’s human nature to want to cheer for your side (where have we seen that demonstrated recently?) – I think most here strive to be objective, but I think you’re expecting perfection.

Maybe you should stick around for a while instead of bouncing in, lobbing hand grenades, and then disappearing.

“Exactly how might these re-reactions play out ? I’m not sure of the details, but it will be fun to watch. I expect the El Nino to give way to a La Nina, and the spike in temperatures to be followed by a “plunge” of a half degree by this time next year. Care to bet me a nickel on that?”

There was a plunge in temps immediately after the 1998 el Nino – was this for the same reason? Can we expect the same again?

Here is how half truths can be so hard to negate – based upon envirocan forecast for the next five days for Vancouver

Words at play

Our highs will be 3-4*C well below normal for the next five days, while lows will stay within 2*C of the average.

Notice how the emphasis is brought to the point of view that I want to be seen – temps lower. whilst the other parameter is sloughed off. I do not indicate in what direction the 2*C is in, higher or lower.

Now if you check the forecast, you will find that it is not really a good one for this demo, as both the highs and lows are lower. It would be better if the lows were up to 2*C higher then average, but this is just for demo purposes.

A truer version would have gone like this, for the next five days, daily highs are forecast to be from average temps to 4*C lower then for this time of year. The lows will range also from average to 2*C lower then normal. Don’t plant your tomatoes yet, for as we all know, weather can be/is highly variable!

Sorry, I didn’t mean to spark a discussion on computer programming. Actually C# is not a ‘script kiddie toy’ and through the Mono project is also Open Source. However, having said that I’d also like to sat that I agree with Carsten and that C++ is more suited to Climate Modeling. FORTRAN was a good language in it’s time, but a good model should be able to utilize modern super computers. C++ is a modern Object Orrented language with a plethora of tools for debugging and testing. I was quite surprised to find that the Met Office was using Perl for griding but that’s another story…

This is just my opinion folks, for me, anything beats programming in machine language!

call me crazy…. but excel. Microsoft lets you separate the logic from the presentation now, so you can throw banks of processors at it on the back end and anyone can play with it on the front end. Microsoft wants a stake in the HPC game so bad they would probably pay for it.

Mikael,
Point taken! I hope I didn’t come across too harsh. Too much hand waving recently about AGW causing a lack of snow in Vancouver and me with my itchy trigger finger ; ) As an El Nino year we should expect VC’s winter to be in what, the 90th percentile for temperature? So no disagreement that it *is* warm there, and dry too… both consistent with established weather patterns.

R Gates,
Was the stratospheric cooling emergent behavior in the models or were they programed to behave that way?

Pascvaks: I’m unaware of a site with time series of planetary temps for all planets

David: Oxygen emits in the microwave with an intensity proportional to temperature. “Albedo” is associated with visible light in general. Over land in the near-60 GHz band, microwaves are essentially absorbed and emitted, not reflected.

Kadaka: Variations in land emissivity have been studied as possible noise to the microwave temperature signal (e.g. drought to moist over time). The effect was tiny, < 0.01 K for global average. Mountains don't move around, so their consistent impact is removed in the anomaly calculation.

Wren: The adjustments in v5.3 impact the AMSU instruments from mid-1998 onward, so pre-AMSU, no impact – which includes early 1998.

Am I correct to understand that you measure what the temperature of the oxygen is, without making any sort of judgment as to what heated the oxygen?

phlogiston (05:23:49) :

There is a reason I only bet a nickel on future forecasts. I expect to be surprised, and often to be wrong, because in all honesty I think we have a great deal to learn.

We cannot really use the 1998 El Nino as a predictive tool, because the PDO was in its warm phase in 1998. Now it seems to be starting into its cool phase, and this means we will be looking at an entirely different series of actions and reactions.

you can get a feel for how different the cycles of La Nina and El Nino were during the cool phase of the PDO. For Example, during the 75 months from January 1950 to March 1957, there was only a single five-month El Nino.

One problem is that the record starts in 1950. There was a pretty good La Nina in 1949, and the El Nino before that would be interesting, as it likely has a lot to teach about the border between warm and cool phases of the PDO.

To learn about pre-1950 El Niño and La Niña episodes it helps to know Spanish, for the South Americans were the ones studying the stuff off their shores before 1950. North Americans didn’t really focus on how far away events effect North American weather until Navy meteorologists returned from the Pacific after World War Two, and it took those young fellows a while to get their bosses to listen.

It would be nice to be able to state, in a step by step fashion, how actions and reactions cause a warm PDO to give way to a cool one, and then how a cool PDO gives way to a warm one, but I don’t think science is able, yet. We are still at the point of observing all the steps, and we haven’t even seen all the steps of the roughly sixty year cycle, using our wonderful modern satellites.

I think Bob Tisdale offers a invaluable service simply by making the data easier to grasp, with graphs and animations. He demonstrates what seems to be a hand-off of energy from the El Nino to the more northern waters, by pointing out a “step change” in graphs. However this is only a very astute observation, and likely represents one step out of many. There also seems to be a delayed reaction in the Atlantic, as the AMO changes to its warm phase in a manner that lags the PDO.

Dr. Bill Gray suggests deep sea currents might have an important role and even be a trigger, but I have been very frustrated in my attempts to find any decent measure of thermohaline circulation, or of waves traveling through the thermocline. All I see in current data are incoherent blobs that seem to have no rhyme or reason, and seemingly suggest thermohaline circulation doesn’t even exist, (though we know it does.) Most people simply ignore it, and focus on sea-surface temperatures, pressure patterns, and trade winds.

You will notice air temperatures hardly matters. Air temperatures are more of a by-product of weather patterns, trade winds and sea-surface temperatures than a cause.

It is for this reason I shake my head over the fact Hansen and Jones have squandered billions of dollars monkeying around with air temperatures. We have all these people adjusting temperatures from 1889, because some farmer switched from raising corn to raising sheep in the field beside the thermometer. Then Anthony and friends come along and show the way they monkeyed with the temperatures is highly suspect. I am very glad Anthony and friends have performed this service, for it seems to show the adjustments were unscientific and based upon preconceptions, however, if we truly have all this time and money to spend, I think it would be better spent studying what causes the PDO to shift, and what controls El Niño and La Niña episodes.

JChristy (05:35:19) :
(…)
Kadaka: Variations in land emissivity have been studied as possible noise to the microwave temperature signal (e.g. drought to moist over time). The effect was tiny, < 0.01 K for global average. Mountains don't move around, so their consistent impact is removed in the anomaly calculation.
(…)

Unfortunately I was not talking about land emissivity, like with wet to dry. I was talking about how things above an observer on the ground can be heated, that heat can be seen by a satellite, yet most of that heat does not reach the observer. Forests are primarily heating the air, the satellites measure those air temperatures, but the ground does not see all that heat. So the satellites end up measuring higher temperatures than what a ground-based observer would. In a similar way, higher geological features like hills and mountains will be heating a lot of air, that the satellites will notice, that will not benefit those living in the valleys.

So the UAH numbers can be showing record heat, yet down here on the ground it’s still pretty cold. The satellites are measuring heat that we are not sensing.

“The extended solar minimum is barely over and already tropospheric temps are near record levels. With or without El Nino lingering, 2010 will beat 1998 as the warmest year on temperature record, (yes, it was warmer a long time ago, but humans weren’t the issue as the trigger a long time ago).

How will AGW skeptics paint the global warming going on in 2010? To what will they ascribe it? It will interesting to see how the worm will turn on the warm to come…”

Well, first of all, we MIGHT be at the end of the extended solar minimum, but this entire cycle is projected to be well below previous cycles, so that should nto be too much of a worry.

Second of all, if it was warmer “a long time ago” and humans were not a trigger for that warming, then it is pretty darn likely that humans are not a trigger for current warming either by normal logic. Your speculation that 2010 will beat 1998 as the warmest year on record is just that, speculation.

Come back in 9 more months and see if that worked out for you or not.

However, the whole statement you made about it being warmer a long time ago without humans being the trigger for the warming means that logically you have to admit the possibility that humans are not the trigger for the current warming either, since it has happened in the past without human influence, so you kinda destroyed your own intent to cause us any worry about human activity by including that disclaimer in there.

Just from what I feel would be a reasonable perspective, if the temperature at the surface is pretty cold, the warm air has to go somewhere… after all, there has to be some sort of energy-balance. There are several possibilities. If the US gets extremely cold, other places (Western Canada) get abnormally warm.

Another possibility, cold air near the surface displaces warmer air which rises into the troposphere, making the troposphere abnormally warm while the surface freezes.

Not sure if possibility #2 has any real validity or not, but at least to me it seems plausible.

I accept the that the uah figures are right but The Winter we have had in the the uk has been the coldest for over thirty years, I would not have believed that possible last november.The arctic temperature remains below average and the ice area and extent is the highest in the last four years.the baltic sea is full of ice maybe next year we will see the thames freeze over.The river where I live did freeze over for the the first time since 1963 it did not last long enough for anyone to skate on this as they did in 1963 but maybe next year.I think that if we continue to see arctic ice recovery this year then we will likely have another cold winter next year in the northern hemisphere despite the elnino

In Vermont, winter came weeks late (ski area openings). Spring is happening, weeks early. In between-high temps slightly cooler than normal, low temps well above normal. March, often in like a lion, out like a lamb-looks like an extended lambing season this year.

“Second of all, if it was warmer “a long time ago” and humans were not a trigger for that warming, then it is pretty darn likely that humans are not a trigger for current warming either by normal logic.”

Peter, this is actually not logical at all. What you’re saying is that the ONLY way global warming can occur is through natural cycles, variations, etc. which in logic means B only can follow A, and never anything else, when in fact, there is no proof of such, and that is exactly what AGW researchers are looking at, namely, can B sometime follow C, and in this case C=human activity (namely a rapid increase in CO2).

“The extended solar minimum is barely over and already tropospheric temps are near record levels. With or without El Nino lingering, 2010 will beat 1998 as the warmest year on temperature record, (yes, it was warmer a long time ago, but humans weren’t the issue as the trigger a long time ago).

How will AGW skeptics paint the global warming going on in 2010? To what will they ascribe it? It will interesting to see how the worm will turn on the warm to come…”

We’ll keep this on record – something to laugh about this time next year.

Its also amusing how prior to 2006 AGW proponents rejected and ignored the possibility of solar changes affecting climate – but now it is grasped as a fig leaf to account for recent cooler temperatures.

Last July there was a thread on here parodying GISS for having higher anomalies in May and June than UAH: “GISS for June – way out there”.
I guess we now know that it was UAH that was at fault, as was correctly suggested by poster Paul K, for which he was attacked by many in the 250-odd posts.

Paul K (09:07:50) :
Next point, I applaud you for headlining the difference between UAH and GISS for June, as you did in May. Every year you trumpet the UAH data for May and June. Why?

Every year the UAH data show a substantial drop in May and June. There is a serious seasonal variability in the UAH data, and it seems to be getting worse. For some reason UAH shows a seasonal rise in the anomaly in February, and seasonal decline in the anomaly for May and June. This has been discussed at several blog sites, such ashttp://deepclimate.org/2009/06/05/uah-annual-cycle-continues-in-2009/

Interestingly, the UAH data seems to show a much higher seasonal impact than RSS, which only shows a minor seasonal change. Something looks very fishy in the UAH reported data.

But wait, let’s look at all the other months…if you’ll go through the archives, you’ll see that I mention UAH almost every month since early 2008. I also mention RSS. Trumpeting? Your reporting trend is non-existent, and you’d be the first to jump on me if I made such assumptions on something else without looking at all the data. You don’t like UAH, you don’t like what I report about it, we get it.

Christy offers some insight as to why UAH and RSS don’t always coincide:

Once again there is a rather large discrepancy between our monthly anomaly (+0.09 deg. C.) and that produced by Remote Sensing Systems (RSS, +0.20 deg. C). We (John Christy and I) believe the difference is due to some combination of three factors:

1) we calculate the anomalies from a wider latitude band, 84S to 84N whereas RSS stops at 70S, and Antarctica was cooler than average in April (so UAH picks it up).

And there’s a good reason why RSS does so.

2) The monthly anomaly is relative to the 1979-1998 base period, which for RSS had a colder mean period relative to April 2009 (i.e. their early Aprils in the 1979-1998 period were colder than ours.)

3) RSS is still using a NOAA satellite whose orbit continues to decay, leading to a sizeable diurnal drift adjustment. We are using AMSU data from only NASA’s Aqua satellite, whose orbit is maintained, and so no diurnal drift adjustment is needed. The largest diurnal effects occur during Northern Hemisphere spring, and I personally believe this is the largest contributor to the discrepancy between UAH and RSS.

Apparently not.

So the real question is, does UAH do a better job than RSS due to platform differences? Does UAH do a better job of representing the planetary temperature than GISS? From my perspective, seeing the issue with weather stations worldwide and the data they produce, and the high number of airports in GISTEMP, I think UAH is free of those biases. Is the “serious seasonal variability” real or an artifact? I don’t know, but I’ll put the question to Dr. Christy.

– Anthony

REPLY: Yes, I asked the question of Spencer, personally I might add. Paul K deserves a few arrows because of the way he acts. Like many of his ilk, he complains loudly but does nothing to advance the actual issue. For the record Paul K was just the troll messenger, not the analyst who pointed out the issue. Paul K gets no respect here. The analyst was another one of those climate cowards that won’t put his name to work, but has plenty to say about how everybody else is wrong.

Despite that, I got the issue advanced due to getting a one-on one meeting with Spencer, even though I thought it might be wrong, I felt the question was valid. And for that, you chide me.

Isn’t trolling under cover fun? You get to say anything like Paul K with no consequences. – Anthony

REPLY: Yes, I asked the question of Spencer, personally I might add. Paul K deserves a few arrows because of the way he acts. Like many of his ilk, he complains loudly but does nothing to advance the actual issue. For the record Paul K was just the troll messenger, not the analyst who pointed out the issue. Paul K gets no respect here. The analyst was another one of those climate cowards that won’t put his name to work, but has plenty to say about how everybody else is wrong.

Despite that, I got the issue advanced due to getting a one-on one meeting with Spencer, even though I thought it might be wrong, I felt the question was valid. And for that, you chide me.

I didn’t chide you for anything, well done for bringing it up with Spencer, he’d been ignoring it for long enough. You backed the wrong horse with your headline on that occasion, it should have been “UAH for June – way out there”, something that had been apparent for a few years.

Isn’t trolling under cover fun? You get to say anything like Paul K with no consequences. – Anthony

No trolling, I’d been pointing out the problems with the UAH spring results for some time after reading Swanson’s GRL paper.

REPLY: I’ll never understand why you think GISS is a reliable measure of temperature. Talk about backing a wrong horse. At least UAH fixes problems, GISS still can’t get the signs of adjustments right after being pointed out in dozens to hundreds of station examples. – A

Thanks for your helpful reply. Some interesting food for thought. I also feel that the deep ocean needs to be brought in for any chance of a working understanding of climate patterns. Bob Tisdale’s work in this area is indeed important.

A new UAH temperature record for march seems very likely inspite of the new calculation which reduces the march values slightly. The old one from 1998 (+0.54) is not affected by recalculation. At least the absolute record values (+0.76) from february and april 1998 are not in danger.

Why waste time arguing about the short term ups and downs, which data source is best and what minor corrections have been applied here and there? UAH is up this month and will be down again sometime in the near future. The big picture is what really matters and that shows that the global temperature is definitely on a long term upward trend – all of the data sources show that to clearly be the case.